For Children of a Certain Age
by angelsintophats
Summary: Because Love is a losing game, but John Watson is not a loser. Slight AU. Slight crack, although not necessarily the hilarious kind. Warning: Metaphors and spoilers.
1. Chapter 1

Everybody has a game. Everybody has their own agenda. Everybody has winners, losers, cheaters and liars. Everybody has their own set of rules and pitfalls.

In the end, it's truly a win if no one gets hurt, and people very seldom win.

This is what comes to John Watson's mind as he looks, open-mouthed, disbelieving, at the roof of St. Bart's Memorial.

* * *

><p>So what makes them so special?<p>

It's in the way that John is a bit like a Jack-in-the-box: boring at first, but lively, engaging, even frightening (he has bad days) when you wind him up.

Sherlock has always been a fan of those, in his own subdued and analytical way; has always found their temperament fascinating. So simple, yet so…

As if for the first time, Sherlock Holmes is lost for words.

"You do know that you're playing with a children's toy?"

"Science, John. It comes in all forms, you know."

It's also in the way that Sherlock is a bit like a well played game of Jenga.

He's tall and wobbly and puzzling, made of a bunch of little pieces, each more vital than the last, and sometimes John has to stare for a good while just to figure out his next move.

Even if his next move happens to be to do nothing.

* * *

><p>"This is my note, I guess. People leave notes, don't they?"<p>

"What?"

Sometimes they're games within games, living pawns in a grand intricate scheme created by…

Whom?

The Player. The Joker. The King of Hearts.

Some people call him Jim.

"No one could be that clever," Sherlock says.

"You could," is the well-timed response.

Jim is long gone and still controlling them. A man called Sebastian is the King of Spades.

Cheater.

It's in the way that John is always there to pick up Sherlock's pieces when he falls; when a three-patch problem turns into a near relapse, when an unsolved case turns into something else "bit not good". John is always there, a dogged determination shadowing his every move as he works to reassemble his friend.

"Goodbye, John."

It's always been said that Sherlock Holmes doesn't have a heart. Correction: Sherlock Holmes does indeed have a heart, it is simply difficult to locate, as it is hidden within the confines of a stubborn jack-in-the-box.

Or maybe, in that moment, Sherlock is more of the story of humpty-dumpty.

"Not everything can be related back to a children's story."

"I'd like to see you prove me wrong."

_Smack_.

John hears what he doesn't see, and what he hears can easily suffice for all of the badly drawn pictures in the world.

But where is a man when he loses his favorite game?

The pieces of Sherlock are jagged and bloody and the raggedy detective, what does he do, does he accept defeat? _No_, says his heart with a tenacious sense of fear, but _yes_, says everything else.

The more pieces you add to him, the taller he gets, the harder he becomes to sustain.

"You can never convince me that you told a lie."

And now his friend is scattered all over the pavement, loose shards of Sherlock scurrying all over London, bits of him seeping between the cobblestone and underneath John's protective exterior.

But John is not a quitter. John cannot give up and John cannot lose.

"Please just stop this. Please, don't be…" A small choke, and then,

John cannot lose because Sherlock cannot be

"Dead."

And he's damn well willing to prove it.


	2. Chapter 2

Lestrade thinks that John has gone mad, but Sally and Anderson just think it's the same deep seated stupidity, standing up finally and serving to make them all queasy with secondhand embarrassment as the army doctor pleads his case.

"_What_ are you planning on doing, exactly?"

"I need to find Sherlock."

Lestrade exhales, closes his eyes. One, two, one, two.

"Sherlock is dead, John."

"No, he's not, he's just…"

An expectant glance from all those present. How can John say it? He struggles with himself, shoves his hand in his pocket and clenches it around the single piece of him that he picked up from Bart's, the single shard that remained.

Silence.

"Nevermind," John decides to say, and he gets up to leave the room, to leave the Yard, and leave behind all hopes that he could maybe have some help with this one, after all.

The three of them watch him leave.

"Keep an eye on him," Lestrade says, in a way that would make Mycroft Holmes proud.

* * *

><p>John starts with the newspapers, trying desperately to channel his friend.<p>

"How the hell do you do this?" He asks.

John has always been shit at detective work, always marveling at Sherlock as he did just that; marveling not just at his skill, but with the grace and fluency with which he conducted that skill. John figures that if he ever manages to do this at all, there will undoubtedly be a floundering struggle, tripping and falling and possibly breaking before he manages to get it right.

"Not even one hint?" He pleads, although the most he gets in response is an apathetic hum from the refrigerator which, because he hasn't the heart to correct the situation, still holds all of Sherlock's grotesque experiments and oddities.

_Focus, John_.

The paper.

What's so special about the paper?

John stares at the infernal thing for ten minutes before one sentence actually gets through his mind. The Sentence That Prevails, however, is a simple job ad, describing a position for a physical therapist that needs to be filled at the local clinic. Other than that, nothing seems to make sense. The obituaries hold nothing, all the crimes are minor; it seems that all the darkness, the witches and wizards, the demons that find their livelihood tormenting the streets of London have dispersed, or at least have taken the day off.

John looks up from the paper. He hears the clock ticking, the refrigerator still humming. It seems almost eerie, the way time has stopped since the Fall.

He takes the piece out of his pocket, sets it on top of the newspaper. Upon closer inspection, there seems to be some writing on it, some sort of…

_An X?_

Now what the hell is he to make of that?

It isn't enough that Sherlock Holmes is the most enigmatic train wreck on this side of the sunset, but now John was forced to play along with this game and the game of his adversaries in order to unlock him from his amorphic purgatory. To find him. To bring him home.

He works through the pain and frustration and brings his way back to that X.

_X marks the spot_.

So John finds himself sitting with the most essential part to Sherlock's puzzle and reasons to start at the end, with the Fall. He gets his coat, bids farewell to a worried looking Mrs. Hudson at the bottom of the steps, and he makes his way to Bart's, The Beginning of the End.

He's clutching the piece so hard that his hand begins to ache.

* * *

><p>"I'm looking for Sherlock," He says and Molly gapes at him for a moment before seeming to remember certain social norms and shuts her mouth. Her face turns to a grimace.<p>

"Lestrade told me you probably would…"

"Lestrade doesn't want to help. I was hoping you would."

Molly looks at John, sizes him up, wonders vaguely why his hand seems to be shoved in his pocket with so much force. He looks tense.

"Do you want a…a coffee or anything?" John only frowns. Frustration.  
>"No. I want Sherlock." And Molly sighs, averting his eyes. Suddenly, a thought. Hope.<p>

"I don't know if I can really help, but…come on, follow me."

And John does.

"This is…his spot. It's where he spent most of his time here, but I suppose you wouldn't know that, well…because after you two moved in together and the cases started to pick up, he didn't come 'round much." Molly's voice is timid, as always, but holds a certain note of certainty that keeps John at ease as he observes his surroundings.

She's brought him into a room with white walls and white counters and black machinery. It's silent, too silent, without even the tick of a clock or the hum of appliances, and it seems as though that silence is Sherlock, in essence, and John can almost feel him in the room.

"Eerie, isn't it?" Almost as if Molly can read his thoughts, she shivers, "Sometimes I still…I still sense him here. As if he's always just behind me, or just 'round the corner, waiting to make some…some absurd comment about my makeup, or to ask me to bring him another coffee, or…"

John senses her pain and nods to give her some semblance of reassurance.

"Thank you," He says. She gives him something reminiscent of a smile and turns to walk out of the room, leaving John to his deductions.

_Deductions_. It's John's turn to have those, and that he does, learning more about Sherlock from minutes spent in that room that he could have with hours of inane questions that would have invariably set his companion into a fit of boredom.

Sherlock is clean and organized in his work. He likes silence, because, John begins to assume, because his mind is always so chaotic, dizzying, frenzied. When it all comes out, Sherlock wants it white and linear, and not the garbled mess that truly compile most of his thoughts.

Plastic covers most of the countertops. Sherlock worries; perhaps not all that arrogant as one would think him.

John sits in this room, sits inside of Sherlock for what seems like hours; the presence that he senses from the detective not so much frightening, but comforting.

He falls asleep.

When he wakes up, he's looking at the ceiling, and he could have been there hours or minutes or seconds or years. The place seems to transcend time, as Sherlock somehow transcends mundane humanity or John's life _with_ Sherlock seems to transcend reality.

There's something on the counter when John stands. Another piece. A clue. He picks it up warily, pulls his other piece from his pocket, compares the two. They seem to connect at the side, forming the end of a map.

* * *

><p>Molly assures him that she wasn't in the room at all after she left, it's just, she says, just too painful still, she misses Sherlock, but at the same time, he's too present, too real in that room, and that's too much for her to take.<p>

Odd, how grieving works.

"He's not dead," John says to her, and they're facing each other in the morgue again, except this time waiting to depart, "He's just missing."

"Good luck, John."

John walks out of Bart's holding another clue, another piece of Sherlock in his clenched fist. His pockets seem to be wearing thin with the amount of times he has to shove his fist in there to make sure the pieces are still there, intact.

But who was in the room?

John can't help but hope that it's a clue, that his mysterious benefactor will show himself and maybe they could go on this adventure together.

Although just as John has benefactors, he has adversaries, not so much Sherlock's as people in connection with those people, the same as how John is not so much the enemy of the enemies of Sherlock as he is a friend of the enemy of those enemies.

He wonders, solemnly, if this is how wars are started elsewhere.

Beside the point.

John, currently, is under the watch of two people: one who wishes to aid him, and one who wishes to destroy him.

But before he figures that out, he's content to keep clenching his pieces in his hand as he makes his way back towards home.


	3. Chapter 3

The night after he finds his second piece of Sherlock, John dreams of ambulances and flashing lights and verbal explosives that hit a little too close to his heart. Shouts. Screams.

_He's my friend, please_.

He finds it discouraging at the very least that he can't get any peace, not even in sleep.

Sherlock is there, in his dream, just how John remembers him, with his collar turned up and his scarf possibly tied a little too tight; he had always thought that having constricted airways attributed to most of the rude or ridiculous things that he's said.

Even so.

The reason that John can tell that it's a dream, mainly, is because Sherlock is smiling. Not that the detective never smiled (especially when dead bodies and murderous masquerades were involved), it was just that in all the time that John has known him, well, he would never smile quite like _that_, like he does in the innermost sanctum of John's subconscious. Sherlock smiles a special smile in his dreams that is reserved for John and John only, the smile that the army doctor can see, _will see_, only once he finds his missing friend.

_Thank you_, it says , and his teeth are white and his eyes crinkle at the edges like those of a man much older and much less intelligent than he and his arms are outstretched and as John walks towards him the lights get brighter and he can almost feel the embrace and –

This is where John wakes up, and nine times out of ten, it's with a cold sweat and a gasp for air, as if he was holding his breath the entire time.

It wouldn't surprise him if he was.

* * *

><p>John decides not to waste time with breakfast or pleasantries with the landlady and instead makes his way dutifully out to the streets of London in Sherlock's old coat and an armful of posters, all proclaiming the same thing:<p>

A picture of the detective, one that John caught on his phone when he wasn't looking (deerstalker not included) adorns the top of the page, above large, bolded lettering. _HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?_ _IF SO, PLEASE CALL…_

And so forth.

People hardly notice when John tacks these posters everywhere, just like they hardly notice any of the others.

_But why don't they stop to look? _He thinks, as he puts one on top of a paper proclaiming that the physical therapist of a local clinic has gone astray, _This is the most important man in the universe._

As John looks around upon his leave of this street, only to depart to another, he notices that the posters disappear almost immediately, and the unthinkable has happened, sending a stone sinking in his heart; Sherlock Holmes has become just another face in the crowd.

He keeps his phone on and checks it frequently, though, just in case.

"Have you seen this man?"

John somehow feels that the person he is currently asking is someone that he knows, someone that he can trust. He has dark hair and a long face and eyes that say that there is more to him than a first impression. John can't quite place where he's seen him before, although his air of professionalism certainly give him hope that it wasn't on the opposing end of a battlefield.

The man looks at the paper and then at John in a very strange way before replying, and perhaps a supermarket isn't the proper place to be making these sorts of interactions but John doesn't care because the machine won't take his card anyway and he wants to put off causing a scene for as long as possible.

So he asks.

"Yes," The man says, "Isn't that Sherlock Holmes? The fake detective?"

"He's not a fake," John manages, "And he's missing and I need to find him."

The stranger frowns, looks in a concerned manner at John, "But didn't he die?"

"No. He's missing and I need to find him."

The man seems to think this over for a while and John crosses his fingers and counts the seconds and wishes and hopes and

"I thought I saw him around St. Bart's," Is the reply, and John's heart flutters frantically, "And if not there down a street or two, maybe just round the corner from here…"

John thanks him for his time, gives him a few pounds for the groceries that he's buying, and runs out of the door, although it is a safe assumption to make that he wouldn't have given the stranger those few pounds if he had realized that he was not, in fact, carrying with him any groceries.

* * *

><p>"I'm looking for Sherlock Holmes."<p>

Sherlock's Homeless Network is more than amiable, more than eager to assist in the search, although John, unlike his friend, doesn't seem to find them very useful. They smell odd, John can't understand some of their thick accents, a lot of them are drunk, and John feels a few pennies lighter after talking to one or two of them.

So he decides to manage the search alone, feeling that with every step he takes, with every place he visits, he gets that much further into his friend, into the workings of his mind, the clockwork of his heart. Because Sherlock Holmes was (is) not simply a man living in London, Sherlock Holmes is the man that London lives _inside of_. Sherlock is every street and every cobblestone and every breath John takes, and John can feel him, more than ever, more than in the hospital or at his grave, in the streets of the city that he had loved so dearly.

The magnifying glass that he brings with him definitely helps a lot.

It doesn't take long for John to find another missing piece, jammed in between the cracks on the sidewalk; the challenge, however, is getting that piece into his possession, diving and digging amongst the crowds and the people and the voices in his head trying to dissuade him in his journey.

_It's not worth it_, they say, but John ignores them.

_Sherlock is gone, _they say, but John ignores them.

At one point, he even begins to tell himself that the search is futile, that the damn crowd and the smoke will never clear, that he'll never get what he wants, but soon he is kicked to the ground and before his face smashes into the pavement, the grabs ahold of that piece and he hangs on for dear life.

This is when time stops.

John looks around curiously, and everyone, everything, every second of every hour has ceased movement and it's just John now, John and his little piece of Sherlock and the lapse of time that he can almost hear passing without _really_ passing at all – a strange internal clock.

John stands up, shoving the piece in his pocket and he surveys his surroundings, marveling at the wonderful silence that has enveloped the entire city, maybe the entire world.

It is then that he sees movement from the corner of his eye, silent, swift, seemingly with purpose, and the army doctor follows the strange shadow; he meanders with it in and out of alleys and across streets, until finally, they come upon a territory that strikes John as marvelously close to home.

Perhaps because it really _is_ his home.

At the door of 221B Baker Street, the shadow materializes into something John recognizes: a face from a nice man in a grocery store.


	4. Chapter 4

"I'd like to help," The man says. He stands in John's doorway while time remains stagnant around them.

"Why?"  
>"Because I am a fan of Sherlock Holmes. He worked with my employer once upon a time, and I would like to thank him for what he's done."<p>

John surveys the stranger; he has delicate features, a thin frame, long nose, short hair. If the detective-then-flatmate-now-missing was there with him, he would have told John that the man standing in his doorway is, in fact, a colonel, commissioned and decommissioned at roughly the same time as the army doctor. Sherlock would also tell John that he is hiding something.

But Sherlock isn't here. Sherlock is missing and John has to find him. If this man is willing to help him, is willing to be the first to listen to him, who is he to question the motives?

The stranger's name is Sebastian. This is also the name of the King of Spades, whose employer happens to be the Joker, although John knows nothing about that.

John and the stranger named Sebastian shake hands, and the latter says, "See? And with this exchange we haven't even lost any time."

John grins as the city begins to breathe around them once more, undulating and living and bursting with renewed activity, although, the doctor figures, to everyone around them it never stopped, did it?  
>Sebastian smiles back, a sort of smile that tells John that he's awfully smart, and most certainly hiding something integral to his work. Maybe he already knows where he can find a piece of his friend?<p>

"I know where you can find a piece of your friend, John," He says quietly, leaning in closer so that the city won't overhear them.

Oh.

"Where?"

Sebastian adopts a look of concern before answering, "It's a bit dangerous, a bit hard to get into."

"Where?" John asks again, determination and excitement rolling off of him in waves.

"Here's the address." Sebastian writes a street name and number on a piece of paper, hands it to John. "Why don't you let me hold the rest of Mr. Holmes while you go?"

John recoils from the man, if only for a second – scrutinizing. Could he trust Sebastian? Sebastian, who put a stop to time, who followed John home, who is a stranger in the life of John and, as far as he knows, the life of anyone else with whom John is acquainted.

But Sebastian believes him when he says that Sherlock is alive, and Sebastian is willing to help, standing on John's doorstep, all sincerity and the promise of success – no matter the cost.

The army doctor only has to hesitate a moment. "You can have all the pieces except one," He says, and hands them over in a bundle of trust and good intentions, naivety personified. Sebastian takes them and nods solemnly, putting them in a bag wherein John thinks he also sees the fleeting shimmer of a gun.

_No matter the cost._

Then, Sebastian is gone, and John's pockets are all but empty.

_I hope I didn't just get robed_, he thinks, although his anxiety is halfhearted. He will see Sebastian again

John looks at the address more carefully, and his feet start to move of practically their own accord. The street seems to pass underneath him almost as if encouraging, egging him along his path and yes he knows exactly where he's going, where this little piece of paper is so intent on taking him.

Only a matter of time now.

Mycroft Holmes stares at John with quite the bewildered expression.

"You _assume_?" He asks incredulously, and John sighs, weary of receiving that _look_, the condescension, the completely unfounded worry.

"Yes, I said that I _assume_ that I need some files from you." Mycroft just shakes his head, as if in disbelief. In a battle between what's right and what's good, certain weariness in the older man's face prevails as he quiets his voice and opens a cabinet – the only one in the whole room without a label.

"What do you need?"

"I need files on your brother. As many as you can give me." Mycroft stops, suddenly, and looks up at John as if searching for something, in which case he would not be the only one.

John hesitates. "Please," He says.

"Why?"

And what is John supposed to say to that? _I met a strange man who can stop time and he told me to come here in search of your disassembled brother? _

No, John is tired of the apprehensive looks. Instead, he shrugs and casts his eyes to the floor, feigning despondence.

"I just want to know him."

Mycroft tsks, "You did know him. Better than anyone, I would wager." John can hear the sad smile in his voice, and he fights the urge to scream.

Silence. Silence for quite a while. "Please," He says again, and the word is just small enough to worm its way past Mycroft's defenses, into one of the cracks in his moral foundation and then ultimately into his heart.

A sigh. Keys jingling, drawers opening and closing. Files thumping on the desk in front of him. The sounds of victory, as sweet as a chorus.

Sherlock would be proud.

Without having any clues as to what he should be searching for, John feels more than a little liberated. To him, this time in his flat with Mycroft's files is a time in which he has utter freedom in order to explore his friend however he wishes, with no one able to omit any information (Mycroft would do no such thing – the sibling rivalry seems to ensure the fact that there are as many bad details as there are good, no more and certainly no less).

"Hello, Sherlock Holmes," John says under his breath upon opening the first file on the stack, "It's nice to properly meet you."

The first few files hold things of little shock value, although John feels compelled to read every word, devour it as if a hungry prisoner famished for any sort of information regarding a finer world. In this case, Sherlock is that finer world and he'll leave all of the connotations and assumptions up to the reader, thanks.

He explores the Sherlock that he knows already, although it seems wrong, reading him – the paper fails to capture all of nuances, all of the things that their relationship is based upon, a foundation of words like "Boring" and "Goodbye". Sherlock Holmes, male, 31 as of 2012. Attended university at – previously employed at – history of drug abuse from – to –

John flips through this pile with a lump swelling in his throat. But where does this bloody thing say anything about what his favorite song is or how the violin helps to calm him down? Where are the mentions of what the great detective dreams about, or what he always say sin those looks that only John can decipher?

The files are cold, analytical; so much like his friend, but simultaneously capturing only a deference of the light that he shines on the world.

Soon enough, the papers start to make John unsettled as he flips through them slowly, cautiously. He moves on quickly, again and again, file after file, and it isn't more than an hour before he's completely lost in Sherlock – so lost, in fact, that he almost doesn't notice when a glimmering piece of the detective falls from between the pages.

The piece tumbles out from behind a picture of a young Sherlock with an unruly mess of raven hair, common scowl replaced with something much more magnificent – a carefree smile. Around him is the arm of someone that could really only be Mycroft, professional looking even in his youth. The photo is aged, albeit kept taken care of, folded at the edges, however the faces of the two inherently happy brothers remain unhindered by time.

John picks up the piece carefully, such a beautiful, neat looking little jigsaw, afraid that he may break it if he were he to grip too tightly or breathe too loudly.

He holds it in his hands, and waits for Sebastian to come.


End file.
